Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/44

16 tany than in all the rest of France. Those parts of the province, where the wild life and superstitious spirit of our rough ancestors are glaringly evident, so to speak, even in our day, were called the Pays des Gars. When the population of a district consists of a number of uncivilized people like those who have just been collected together in the opening scene, the folk round about in the countryside call them "The Gars of such and such a parish," which classical epithet is a sort of reward for the loyalty of their efforts to preserve the traditions of their Celtic language and customs. In their daily lives, moreover, there are deep traces of the superstitious beliefs and practices of ancient times. Feudal customs are even yet respected, antiquaries find Druidical monuments there, and the spirit of modern civilization hesitates to traverse those vast tracts of primeval forest. There is an incredible ferocity and a dogged obstinacy about the national character, but an oath is religiously kept. Our laws, customs, and dress, our modern coinage and our language, are utterly unknown among them; and if, on the one hand, their combination of patriarchal simplicity and heroic virtues makes them less apt at projecting complicated schemes than Mohicans or North American redskins, on the other hand they are as magnanimous, as hardy, and as shrewd.

The fact that Brittany is situated in Europe makes it very much more interesting than Canada. It is surrounded by enlightenment, but the beneficent warmth never penetrates it; the country is like some frozen piece of coal that lies, a dim black mass, in the heart of a blazing fire. The attempts made by some shrewd heads to make this large portion of France, with its undeveloped resources, amenable, to give it social life and prosperity, had failed; even the efforts of the Government had come to nothing among a stationary people, wedded to the usages prescribed by immemorial tradition. The natural features of the country offer a sufficient explanation of this misfortune; the land is furrowed with ravines and torrents, with lakes and marshes, it bristles with hedges, as they call a sort of earthwork or fortification